BHUBANESWAR: As a large number of seats in private English medium schools for children from economically weaker sections (EWS) under the Right to Education (RTE) Act continue to remain vacant, the Odisha State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (OSCPCR) has asked the School and Mass Education department to identify and mobilise such children to schools.
Last year, the department opened a dedicated portal ‘RTE Paradarshi’ for online admission of the EWS students to private schools in their neighbourhood under RTE which mandates 25 pc reservation of seats for such sections. However, the online process did not yield much result with just about 5,000 students taking admission against the presence of 36,000 seats under the EWS quota last year.
In a letter to the Director of Elementary Education wing on Wednesday, OSCPCR Sandhyabati Pradhan said parents and children of socially and economically disadvantaged communities are not acquainted with the online system. Many of them are first generation learners. It should be the responsibility of the officials concerned to identify eligible children and mobilise them towards schools.
“Also the burden of online entry and subsequent submission of physical documents in schools is on the applicants which is a violation of the free and compulsory education, as they have to spend money for online entry as well as taking print-out of the documents and visiting the office”, she said.
The commission made a number of suggestions to improve the enrollment in 2022-23 academic year. It urged the elementary education wing to put up hoarding in local language in each district education office (DEO) and private school for parents to know about the admission process to EWS seats. Besides, it suggested that each private school designates one person who will survey the situation in the neighborhood areas and help parents/students in entering details in the Paradarshi portal.
The name of the designated person must be available to the DEO. The commission also said that admission to these seats should continue throughout the year. Stating that the DEO should form a committee involving officials concerned and NGOs working on child rights, Pradhan said that committee should be provided with the scope to visit places within the districts to map the situation and link the identified children through the portal.